FRYE GAILLARD is a former writer-in-residence in the English and history departments at the University of South Alabama. He is the author of thirty books, including With Music and Justice for All: Some Southerners and Their Passions; Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award; The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, winner of the Gustavus Myers Award; and A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s (Georgia), an NPR best book of 2018. He lives in Mobile, Alabama.

Now published in a 25th-anniversary edition including a 'listener's guide to country music,' Watermelon Wine: Remembering the Golden Years of Country Music is a straightforward examination of the country music tradition and the passions that fuel it by award-winning journalist and author Frye Gaillard. Chapters address diverse subsets of the genre from blues country to gospel country, the legacy of Johnny Cash, the impact of commercialism on country music creativity, and much more. A solid, hands-on assessment of one of America's most enduring traditions, once considered vulgar and crude but lately earning a respectable place in people's hearts for its raw emotion and vitality.